


Rich Kid Club

by Vthryl



Series: Vthryl's World [3]
Category: Vthryl
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:28:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29716482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vthryl/pseuds/Vthryl
Summary: Figured out a decent title but still have no fucking clue for a summary
Series: Vthryl's World [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2182611
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter 1

I grimaced as I sipped my drink. Gin wasn’t my go to but somebody placed the martini in my hand. A tray went by and I deposited the glass now that the photographers had moved on. They would come back around, but I’d have something worth drinking in my hand by then. 

I scanned the room. The Steeles were there. Howard, the biggest asshole on the face of the planet, was one person I made a point to not exchange pleasantries with at each event we ended up coexisting up at. The Cullens, the Bellamys, the CEO of Worley Studios, the CEO of Novak Motors. Even the Bernals were there.

This was an important annual event with a guise of charity to benefit the hungry and impoverished in the country when it was really for publicity and nothing more. This year it happened to be held in Seattle, which was fine with me. The less I had to travel, the better. I only showed up because I had to, expected to help my mother keep up the good image, but my involvement ended there as much as possible. Besides, I had classes in the morning.

My eyes found a light blonde woman in a blue almost white dress. Traci looked positively bored, drinking sparkling water out of a tall glass, while her icy blue eyes scanned the room with a hand on her hip. She looked irritated too, but that was hardly new.

I made my way to her, catching my reflection in a window. I was shoved into a burnt gold dress that hugged my skin with black heels strapped to my feet. My darker blonde hair falling in natural waves down my back.

“You look pissy and we’ve barely started,” I said, greeting with the mandatory formal kiss to the cheek which we held long enough for a photo to be taken. Anything missed and there would be claims everywhere that we were feuding in the morning. 

“I am pissy.” She threw back the last of her water as if it was a shot of scotch. The strings in the corner increased in volume, reminding those here that this event had multiple live orchestras to perform tonight, and wasn’t that just so impressive? Everything about these events screamed performative actions if you knew how to look right. “My father and I had it out on the way here today.”

“And that’s different how?” I threw my arm around her shoulder. The father/daughter duo got along terribly, which was the only option with how miserable of a twat Howard could be. “Well, the whole college swap starts in two weeks. You can do it.”

She gave a heavy sigh. Traci was six months older than me but seemed so much younger. She was innocent in a way that I couldn’t be but more mature in others. She’d grown up in this world. She grasped the secrets, the obvious dark side of every CEO, and their underhanded actions. She could look at a statement and pick apart the truth, find the ugly realities that hadn’t been uttered all in the span of a headline. Ninety percent of the time, she was right. 

“Collin got to skip this year,” Traci said and I glanced around, unsurprised by her brother’s absence.

“He’s off in Europe ain’t he?”

“Yes, he is.” A tray of crab puffs came by, and I stole two, passing one to Traci. “At least you’re here.”

“Please,” I said, still scanning the room and taking mental attendance, finding the new faces and cataloging who was missing, “you know there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

She chuckled behind her glass but her attention was diverted. I followed her gaze to Novak Motors’ CEO in training, Angelina Mercer. 

I bumped my hip against Traci’s. “Go talk to her.”

“What? No, I don’t know what you’re-”

I rolled my eyes. We were so far past denials at this point. “Ask her to dance.”

“Kara, this is not a dancing event and you know it.” There was the quintessential Traci Steele. A tight voice that was a few octaves too high, an irritated tone, and a superiority complex at its finest.

I shot her a grin. “All the more reason to make it one.”

I walked away, leaving the smaller woman to her own devices before she could insist that I remained by her side and run damage control. Angelina was certainly amazing in more than one way, but not my type.

At the bar, I ordered a cosmopolitan. I took a sip of the cocktail, appreciating the extra hit of liquor they were kind enough to add. Stepping away, I nearly ran right into a woman with black hair and a deep purple dress. Arryn Bernal.

“Shit, sorry.” I side stepped just in time, my drink tilted back to keep it from spilling over. That’d be two tragedies in one.

“Quiet alright,” Arryn said, her eyes scanning over my body. It was a habit she adopted five months ago when she entered, or technically reentered, the scene. She had been off on her ‘gap year’ ever since I had been dragged into this world and returned four years later with a quiet demeanor and a repeated phrase of ‘no comment’ when asked where she had been. “Good to see you, Kara.”

I scoffed before I could stop myself. These events weren’t all bad. I had found people in this society that I genuinely enjoyed. Arryn Bernal had never been one of them. Be it her absence in the beginning or just the air surrounding her. “Right, likewise, I mean.”

A camera swung by. Arryn’s hand landed on my arm, we both laughed. A flash and the lens was gone along with her hand.

“You’ve been doing well, I trust?”

And then there was that, the absolutely infuriating way she insisted on speaking. So careful and precise. Traci had her own air surrounding her, but that was part of what made her fun, getting under her skin and making her angry. But Arryn was different, impenetrable. She refused to be anything but polite. Honestly, she was nothing besides whole heartedly boring. It was frustrating to encounter when I was already up to my neck in annoyances.

I shifted in my heels, taking a sip of my drink. “Splendid, darling,” I said with no attempt to cover the mockery in my tone.

“I’ll be seeing you.”

She went to approach the bar but I had never been very good at letting things be. I was a last word kind of woman. “Yes, I wouldn’t want to keep you from your needlepoint.”

Unbothered, Arryn squared her shoulders. _I bet she wouldn’t notice if I put a book on her head._ “And I’d hate to interrupt any of your adrenaline driving decision makings. Surely there’s a roof you’re meant to be jumping off of?”

 _This_ was the good stuff. This was how I stayed alive. I took too much pleasure in wreaking havoc. I took what I could from the little I was given at these bullshit evenings. “Ziplining from the top of the Space Needle is tomorrow, actually. Care to join?”

“Unfortunately, I do believe I have a very painful root canal I’d rather attend.” I didn’t laugh but it was close. “Besides, we’re leaving tonight, and I’d hate to force a change in plans. One night is enough in Seattle, I think.”

I press my lips tight before I say something stupid that will land me on the front page of TMZ’s website. “Take care, Bernal.”

I moved to the corner where my disgruntled uncle was hiding, rattling his empty glass at the staff who ignored him, no doubt an order given by my mother. I took the empty seat next to him, making impolite conversation for the next half hour while my eyes definitely didn’t follow Arryn around the room for one second.

\-----

Flying across the country for a singular event seemed like a complete and utter waste, which was a point I made to my parents about half a dozen times. What did I know though? 

I sat in silence on the jet that evening, lightly buzzed from the schnapps I had been drinking. My shoes were kicked off on the floor with my feet pulled up in the chair beside me.

My dad sat down next to me, silent and stoic. “Did you have a good time, Arryn?”

He cleared his throat and unbuttoned the top of his shirt, his jacket already tossed aside. This pomp and circumstance was new in the last fifteen or so years since our company boomed with the demands only increasing each year as we were further considered part of the ‘club’. 

“I guess.” I flipped a page of my book.

He scratched at the back of his neck. “You know, it might not be the worse to try and make some friends.”

The words on the page blurred together. I looked up and turned to face him. “In that social group?” I deadpanned. There were some I was friendly with but kids like Traci and Angelina and _Kara_? “No, thank you.”

“Arryn-”

“I’m serious.” My words were tight and clear. “I will not belittle myself for them.”

My mom’s head popped into view. Of course, she hadn’t been far. “But, sweetie, not one said anything about belittling.”

“I think some of them might even surprise you,” my dad added.

My friends were ones from town, the sons and daughters of our security team. I made friends just fine.

“One day, you will be in charge. Don’t you think it’d be worth getting to know the same people you may be partners with?”

 _If only we weren’t 38,000 feet in the air I’d walk away from this conversation altogether._ “I can promise you, Kara Hollis will not be the least bit relevant come time for me to take over.” I almost roll my eyes at the thought.

My mom hums. “She’s always seemed like such a nice girl, even if she is a bit… unrestrained.” I wasn’t sure if she was referencing the cliff diving or bungee jumping or motorcycle stunts. Kara was an accident waiting to happen and had yet to face a single consequence.

“Well, she’s not. And if you think I’m befriending a single Steele, you can think again.”

My dad sighs and the lights in the cabin dim. We were at full altitude. _Time for a nap._ “What about Justin Fulton?”

I laughed the whole way over to a reclining seat on the opposite side of the jet, not justifying them with a response.

\-----

“I miss you,” I sighed into the phone.

Merton was so close, only a two hour drive east from Seattle and yet I was rarely allowed to visit. First, there was the issue of security. Second, was the reminder that Alyce Roman was a divorced woman whose ex-husband had a child with her ex-best friend. The scandal had been drug up when she took over Knox Communications. So my visits were infrequent and too short.

“ _I saw you in four different magazines at the grocery store. Dad picked on up and they were discussing the likelihood that you were doing the nasty with Steven Harmon._ ”

We both laughed just from the utterance of that sentence alone. “One day they’ll figure out I’m a lesbian.”

“ _You could just tell them. Make it a whole thing. Give Alyce some extra publicity for supporting her gay daughter._ ”

I gagged at the very thought. “Nah, it’s become a game at this point.”

Sometimes the media got closer than others. Too often they suggested Traci and I were a thing which was wrong on so many levels that it was an idea asking to be toyed with. Then other times it was weeks on end of possible proposals or pregnancies or surprise, I’d been married to one of our bodyguards Johnathan Brett this whole time.

“ _What about you and Arryn?_ ” Ruby asked, her voice teasing. She was twenty years old, already on her way to being valedictorian with a double major, but sometimes she could still act like she was ten. 

“Bernal?” My voice came out a cross between incredulous and disgust. “God, let’s go back to Steven.”

“ _Now, now,_ ” Ruby tutted on the other end, her voice always light and free even when delving into ridiculous topics. “ _I saw how you two were looking at each other. There’s probably a ship name trending on Twitter already. If not Twitter then certainly Tumblr._ ”

“It was staged, Ruby, just like every other photo.” I shoved aside my breakfast, finding little interest in it now. “Besides, Arryn was the one putting her hand on my arm.”

My phone buzzed before Ruby continued. “ _I don’t know what picture you’re talking about, but there are no hands on arms and this is definitely not staged. Unless you’ve been practicing your bedroom eyes for the press._ ”

Bethan walked in and that was the sign Saturday morning was in full swing. There was something to attend, a response to be given, someone demanding my time. “Okay, I have to go for a whole slew of reasons, but mostly because you just mentioned my supposed bedroom eyes.”

“ _Love youuuuuu!_ ” Ruby shouted through the phone before hanging up without waiting on my response. 

I tossed my phone screen down on the table. I didn’t want to see the agenda that had been sent to me. “What do I have to do first?”

After parties, I was always cranky. There was just enough alcohol the night before to give me a pounding headache and never enough water to keep it at bay. It didn’t help that those parties were always on the verge of fun but never actually being it. So close, but there were appearances to keep and a stature to maintain.

“An attitude adjustment would be a solid start.” Bethan had been around since before me. She wasn’t afraid of me. CEO’s daughter or not, Bethan was here before and would remain after. She outranked. “Besides that, a reading to children event at the library, a meeting with the post, and a fitting for next weekend’s event.”

I was handed a hardcover picture book featuring a cartoon pig with feathers tied to his arms, a list of questions to expect with the appropriate answers I should give, and three photos of possible outfits. “When you said attitude adjustment, you meant a worse one, right?”


	2. Chapter 2

“Do _not_ make me do this,” I sighed, my forehead thumping against my desk. “Please.”

It wasn’t too often that I fully applied begging, especially not since I had returned months ago. I’d done exactly what was asked of me from the second I walked back through the doors. No fights, no bargaining, no demands. I wore the dresses, went to the events, and faced the very people who I had all but abandoned. But this was too far.

“It’s just one night, Arryn,” my dad said like it was not open to discussion no matter how much I pushed. “Besides, it’s important to be forming connections with these other companies. And when was the last time we held an event?”

“Can’t we do literally anything else?” I asked anyway, glancing back down to the invitation in my hand. All of the teens and young adults who were part of the 'Rich Kid Club' were invited along with a handful of celebrities who would perform or post half a dozen instas to increase the discussion around the event as a whole. Every single person I wanted nothing to do with would be invited to my 22nd birthday party. "What about bowling? I hear that’s a big hit.”

“I’ll have them bring the alley to you.” My dad winked and walked away signaling end of discussion.

Gods, there’s no worse way I could celebrate my birthday surrounded by people like Traci Steele or, gods forbid, Kara Hollis-Roman. A cake and a movie marathon with Marni really would have been just fine.

If I thought I’d get anywhere, I would have gone begging my mom to do something, intervene in any way possible. But I knew that this had nothing to do with my birthday and everything to do with company relations. I groaned, cheek hitting the keyboard of my computer and I ignored the line of g’s going across the screen.

\-----

There were about a hundred reasons I didn’t want to spend the weekend before Thanksgiving flying across the country for a rich girl’s birthday party. First and foremost, being that this was supposed to be my time with Ruby and Dad since I would be stuck with my mother on the actual day of Thanksgiving. The one good thing was that I had been granted a plus one. 

Ruby was a bundle of energy, her homework spread out in front of her on the plane as she wrote down one thing and rambled on about another. It was still a while before we arrived and a few hours more till the party, giving us time to get ready. Then after the event, I would stay the night at whatever hotel I was shoved into then straight to publicity events around the city in the morning including a charity food drive, and then straight back home before class on Monday. I was exhausted already.

“Do you think you’ll be making your bedroom eyes at her all night long?” Ruby asked, unable to deter her giggle as she finished writing down an equation.

Despite explaining half a dozen ways I absolutely abhorred Arryn Bernal, my sister would not let the damn photo go. “You know me. Can’t resist a rich girl.”

“I read something the other day saying that this wasn’t the real heiress at all. That she was a replacement because the actual Arryn died in a horrible accident years ago. That’s why her gap year was so long.”

I rolled my eyes, filling out my own homework. “Definitely not because she had an ever so typical drug problem and had to go to rehab.”

“Hm, that’d be sad too. Is that what really happened to her?”

“How would I know? It’s not like I have a secret file on her. Traci said, knowing how these things go, it was either drugs or a falling out with her parents probably due to drugs.”

The end of Ruby’s pencil tapped against the table. “Do you really not like her?”

I sighed, running a hand through my hair. “She just… bothers me is all.”

“Why?” she pressed.

I took a deep breath, filling my lungs before letting out a mere, “Because,” with a rush of an exhale.

“Because…” she waited patiently.

It wasn’t a question I had really spent time considering. I decided Arryn wasn’t worth that sort of mental exercise. “Whatever happened before, she got to choose to leave,” I said even though I was sure the situation surrounding it all had been ugly. It was undoubtedly a PR nightmare, which is why Arryn’s face was only seen in paparazzi shots all over the country. No other comments offered besides that she had been traveling the world, learning more cultures and history. _Bullshit_. “She got to leave, and she was stupid enough to come back anyway.”

\-----

The party was fine or whatever. It was held outside, the night air still warm despite it being November. Breezes brushed through the palm trees overhead and the waves could be heard crashing just off the shore. There was a dance floor under our feet, built above the sand just for the occasion no doubt. Fancy lights were strung from pole to pole, little golden bulbs that were overshadowed by the tall, swinging lights that changed color every so often. There was live music by a few popular groups that were the kind of loud that didn’t swallow all of the other noises but helped intensify it, the buzz of conversation and high pitched laughter. People were dancing and getting drunk. I even walked in on Justin Fulton and Simon Kane smoking a joint which they were kind enough to share with me.

The food was okay. Ruby ate three pieces of cake and washed it all down with a bright red punch that had way too much alcohol for my lightweight little sister to be consuming.

Arryn’s parents were there at the beginning, milling around and making introductions, shaking hands. They were exceedingly kind to Ruby even without a camera to catch the interaction, and it made me a little bit nicer when they turned to greet me. Handshakes, head nods, a hello, and polite question or two. That was how these things went. They left when it got later, when the band changed over and when the punch first rolled out.

Arryn had a girl who followed her around most of the night. I caught her name at some point, Marni. She wore casual clothes which looked out of place next to Arryn’s near goddamn ball gown. That left when her parents did too, the wide skirt shed for something that stopped midthigh and actually allowed for some movement. 

For most of the night, I danced. I danced with Ruby or Traci or Justin or, at one point, Jonathan, who was in charge of my security detail for the night. The saltwater hovered in the air and soaked into the strands of my hair that, like always, hung loosely down my back. My makeup started out pristine but was sure to be just slightly out of place from sweat and humidity. Every breeze became a relief. 

The next band that went on was the loudest and the music was in my chest, reverberating between my ribs and wrapping around my heart. I was alive with it, tingling in my fingertips, a rhythm grinding out from my hips. I danced without worry because everyone around me did exactly the same. 

When I opened my eyes again, I found myself half an inch away from pressing my body up against Arryn’s. I froze, and Arryn didn’t even notice the proximity. She was faced the other way, allowing me to just barely catch her profile, the smile that filled her face as her shoulders shook and her head tipped back. Justin was dancing with her. He could loosen anyone up, his dress shirt unbuttoned and hanging wide open for whoever might want to run their fingers over his abs. A fact that left me rolling my eyes but slightly jealous I couldn’t get away with doing that.

I was unable to move, staring at Arryn’s movements, the way her body moved, the edges of her lips moving along to the lyrics, how her eyes were on Justin but also around him. She was into it but not _into it_. I found a smug hint of satisfaction and moved inside of Arryn’s space, eyes closed for the sake of plausible deniability. I wanted nothing to do with her, but there was something to be said about walls being demolished, about uncovering a person even when they tried to hold back. There was something to be appreciated about the truth. 

Five months ago, there had been a whole spread in People about how Arryn Bernal, the prodigal heiress, had returned. The very next day, there was a separate spread about how the prodigal heiress had cut her hair. How scandalous! Now the edges had grown out, falling just past her shoulder blades in tumbling black waves. I withdrew my hand before wrapping a single curl around my finger. 

I danced with Arryn for almost a minute before she bothered to notice I was there. When she finally turned, surprised, she didn’t stop, but pressed in a little bit closer, taking up a little more space. 

“I didn’t think you’d come,” she shouted over the music, and I couldn’t help but grin at her. I was a couple of inches taller than her tonight.

“So you were thinking about me, huh?” What can I say? I was a flirt.

“I think about things I don’t like all the time,” she said but she was smiling wide, her hair was loose, her arms were up at her sides, and her body moving to a rhythm that had tied itself within our cells. “Coffee, Discrete Mathematics, Sh-”

“The devil?” I cut her off. I lifted a finger, letting it slip over the curve of her cheek, not telling myself to stop. 

The energy left Arryn just slightly, but she recovered quickly enough. “Don’t flatter yourself, Hollis-Roman.” This was said right in my ear, the two of us pressed together. “I know much worse demons than you.”

And then she was gone. I hated her, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit turned on too.


	3. Chapter 3

“Explain.” Alyce was staring down at me with her arms crossed over her chest and a stern look on her face. She was already pant suited up, all authority figure and CEO and all that shit. It didn’t fit her, not really. She didn’t match the person I used to think about, not the one I saw once every few years, not the one who refused to be an adult at all, or at least the kind of adult who was also a mother. 

When I dragged my eyes away from the imposing figure of my mother, I found a picture of Arryn and myself, twisted together and dancing the night away at Arryn’s party. I rolled my eyes. “This is what you’re worried about?” I was more concerned about the shit I would get from Ruby than any negative feedback from the media. “Someone broke their NDA, and I was drunk. Oh, and high.”

“ _Kara_.”

“What?” I defended with a shrug. “You told me to explain. I’m sure Arryn was drunk too. Everyone was drunk. Security was probably drunk.”

“I can guarantee you, Madam, that I was entirely sober.”

I didn’t even justify Johnathan with a glance. “Kiss ass.”

“This is a relations headache at the least,” Alyce snapped at me, words tight and frustrated. “I’ll have to speak with Mr. Bernal this afternoon, which is hardly something that fits into my schedule.” She spat out the name Bernal like it tasted sour.

“Alyce,” I snapped, tossing the lacrosse stick I’d been using a minute ago to the ground, sweat dripping from my forehead despite the cool morning. I wiped at my face with a towel and stared at my beloved mother with a hard set look on my face. “It was a party full of eighteen to mid twenty year olds. Do you think anyone was sober? It’s not like I slept with her for fuck’s sake.”

“It looks like you were ten seconds away from doing just that.”

“Go talk to Mr. Walton whose son was trying to fuck anyone who moved there. Or Mrs. Bloggs’ daughter that was definitely giving a blow job in the bathroom. Or how about Mr. Thorne’s kid Siena who was doing a line of coke?”

Alyce stepped directly in front of me, her lips were tinged from the cold though she didn’t shiver. The sun was over her left shoulder which made my eyes water. Or maybe that was the sweat on my forehead causing my sunscreen to run into my eyes. “I don’t care what any of those dumbasses do because they don’t impede my image.”

And that’s what it simplified to, what piece Alyce bothered to care about. There was really only one reason I was forced to be here at all. At least both sides of this party were grudgingly coexisting. 

“You trying to fuck some girl is the last thing I need to throw my image under the bus.”

I scoffed, “I mean, with so many other possibilities…”

Alyce glared, arms crossed over her chest. Sweat rolled down my back even as the cool fall air brushed past us, and I glanced briefly towards the vast expanse of perfectly green grass.

“You are here for one reason, Kara,” Alyce stated between grounded teeth. Maybe it was meant to feel like a threat or a taunt, but it only landed as a reminder. I was used to letting those roll right off of me. “Stay away from the Bernal girl or so help me.”

“Or what?” I challenged, not mentioning that I didn’t care. I didn’t give a shit about Arryn Bernal, about the sexy smirk of her lips or the danger of her hooded eyes. I couldn’t be bothered with caring about a single damn thing because I had been shoved into a bedroom in this too big house, plopped into college courses, hauled to stylists. There was only one way to survive any of this, a singular method to get me through again and again. “I don’t have much more to lose at this point.”

She rolled her eyes in frustration mixed with disgust and was interrupted by the ringing of her phone. It was how our conversations tended to go. “It would do you well to remember not everything is about you,” were her parting words, heels clicking against the concrete as she answered the call with a brisk “Hello,” and disappeared inside. 

_That’s been the lesson you’ve been teaching me since the day I was born._

\-----

“Hello?” I answered my phone out of blatant curiosity and for no other reason at all. There were certain contacts that just about came pre-programmed when your father was CEO of one of the major companies in the country. 

“ _Arryn Bernal._ ” One of them just so happened to belong to a certain blonde. “ _Long time, no chat._ ”

My eyes cut to my mom, who sat next to me, writing some speech for my dad to present tomorrow. I stood, the leather cushion holding to my thighs a second too long from the heat that had somehow managed to find its way inside our home, the heat I was no longer quite as accustomed to. 

“We don’t chat,” I said, blinking dumbly as I stepped into the kitchen that was emptied and dark for the evening. “Ever.”

“ _Hm_ ,” Kara murmured like that was a statement worth debating. “ _I figured it was time to rectify that._ ”

The fridge held the coconut cake we had over the weekend, and I pressed my phone between my ear and shoulder as I pulled it out and popped off the top. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, cutting away a layer of outside frosting to get towards the cake inside, “but why would we do that?”

It was a well known fact that Kara and I just… did not get along. No one appreciated me in this upper circle except Justin Fulton, who had known me far longer than any of the others. Bernal Technologies worked with Worley Studios to help better their special effects and keep them with the latest technology for years.

“ _Must there truly be a reason?_ ” Kara asked, her tone bored. I could almost picture her, distressed jeans and flannel tied around her waist, heavy boots on her feet. Photographers documenting her every step with careful regard as her mother was still the newest member of our society. 

Chewing another bite of cake in consideration, I tapped the prongs of the fork against my bottom lip. “Considering we find one another relatively… distasteful, I just assumed our relationship was best left to a professional capacity.” This was how my dad talked when he didn’t want to be blatantly rude, and it was the tactic I stuck to, with some added leniency, when it came to Kara. We hated each other. That fact was so ingrained that it was practically a sport at charity events and banquets. 

“ _Did you see our sensual photoshoot they released?_ ” 

It was damn near impossible to avoid the gossip columns and speculations when we were on the front page of magazines every other day, but that didn’t mean I didn’t at least try. “Our tension is simply off the charts, isn’t it, darling?” I was fucking with her, chewing loudly and adding an extra ounce of inflection to my accent to make it more pronounced. 

“ _How could it not be? We were the best looking people in that room, after all._ ” The words were said with confidence and a hint of suggestion. We had been in a room with nothing but attractive people, all with our own personal stylists intentionally making us our most appealing. 

I can’t say I minded the implication. “Doesn’t quite hit the same over the phone.”

“ _I digress, Bernal_ ,” and Kara was definitely flirting now, her voice dropping a couple of octaves until it registered as nothing but sexy, tempting. “ _There’s something to be said about being so close to what you can’t quite have._ ”

My fork hovered in the air, vanilla and coconut stuck in my throat, clogging up my nose. And I could picture Kara, her toned arms and tanned legs and those eyes that flash with a promise of something not quite safe. I thought about how everything had been about security and shelter and caution for too long now. “I don’t like you,” I said without putting in any effort to hide this plain and simple truth.

There was a pause, it felt heavy like Kara had a dozen things to say but held them all back. “ _Oh, Arryn_ ,” she finally responded, sighing my name like a surrender, like a prayer, “ _isn’t that half the fun?_ ”

\-----

There were a handful of things I knew about the upper upper class children because it was impossible not to. After Klara Cullen left to join the military her younger sister Mia had become heir to their family’s company though it was obvious she didn’t want it either. Caitlin Bellamy could often be found doing questionable things as boredom always got the better of her and she had no problem using her money to solve that. Justin Fulton was a troublemaker who flirted with anything that moved and played pretend sports like water polo and disc golf. Traci Steele was another who became the heir to their company after their older sibling stepped down, her brother Collin abdicating to travel the world. Angelina Mercer was the closest version of a prodigy and whether genuine or a fine tuned act, she was endlessly kind and sincere. She was a shoo in for future CEO of Novak Motors, though not much was known about her. 

And Kara Hollis-Roman. Kara was a daredevil, reckless. She rode a motorcycle. She went to clubs. She kissed girls beneath streetlights, uncaring that cameras had flashes, and they were all there to capture that exact moment. Kara played lacrosse and basketball and enjoyed kickboxing. She went to concerts and was found in the crowd as often as she was in a private box. She had a younger half-sister. She had terrible posture until she was beside Alyce Roman and then she was straight backed and thin lipped. Tension thrummed between the two of them and no interview where they doted over each other would convince me otherwise.

I snapped a picture of a bright red anthurium and texted it to Kara.

To Kara 10:23 am > Made me think of you. 

I gave it a single beat of a second before circling the worm crawling across the wide leaf and sent it again. 

To Kara 10:23 am > My bad, forgot to highlight the subject matter.

There’s a time difference of about three hours, and Kara answered right away regardless. 

_Kara 10:24 am > don’t flatter urself, bernal. i barely even laughed. _

I smiled without thinking about it. 

To Kara 10:25 am > But you still did ;)

“Who are you talking to, darling?” my mom asked while we were in the gardens together. Tending to the plants there was something we had started when I was young and fervently dismissing the bonding activities of cooking, needlepoint, or shopping. 

Gardening with my mom, horseback riding, and a small amount of sword work with my dad when my mother wasn’t looking. They were pieces of my childhood I had cherished. They were things I had ached for while I was away. 

Hands plunged deep in the soil, sweat beading on my neck, text messages intentionally ignored. “No one,” I said quickly like I was hiding something.

Of course, the look I received was one of concern. That was how all my conversations went, how every comment was regarded. “Arryn…”

“Cut it out,” I grumbled as I did as a teenager. I was an adult now, but there had been years missed, and I had decided it was only right to make sure we didn’t feel like there were any moments lost. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

Teeth digging into her lip, eyebrows furrowed. No amount of dirt or sun would make my mom’s line of thought transition from one topic to the next.

So, I sighed heavily, like I was exhausted just at the concept of conversing. “It was Kara.” 

“Roman?” my mom asked in surprise, eyebrows shooting up now. 

“Hollis-Roman,” I corrected quietly, not that it mattered except I get the sense that it did. Why else would Kara hold onto her full title like that? The Hollis meant little, after all. Her dad was a high school teacher with nothing significance tied to his name. “But yes.”

My mom placed a seed in the crevice she created, fingernails dark with soil as she carefully buried it. “I seem to recall you saying you hated her,” she remarked with more buried in her tone than she bothered with a look. A wide brimmed sun hat casted shadows over her face as she focused on our task. 

Though there had always been plenty of traditional tasks, my life had never been what one may consider that of a rich girl. That was more of Steele territory. Sure, there were the dresses and the events and all that, but we were more involved with the company, one of which had not quite finished its growing, hadn’t quite worked itself to establishment. It was newborn, fresh and uncoordinated. 

We had no desire for full fledged luxury. Our house was large, but not overly so. We held events, but few that were exclusive. 

So I was not unfamiliar with calluses, no stranger to hard work. I was high society, but loosely so. Which meant I threw around words like hate, like despicable, like infuriating. All words I’d used to describe Kara. 

“We’ve come to a temporary truce.”

“Oh?” my mom asked the questions but added nothing else. She let me do with it what I would. 

And there were so many months of shutting them out, so long of not knowing what to say. Still, nothing was back to how it was, nothing had been restored. There was a stilted awkwardness between us, one that shouldn’t exist between a mother and daughter. 

“I don’t know why,” I admitted to keep the conversation going, to discuss something concretely in the present and in no way inflicted by a portion of my past. “But, I guess I don’t despise the concept.”

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” she commented, resting back on her heels and staring down at the work we had finished, a planter mounded with fresh, dark dirt. It’s just before winter, but the days were still warm and the sun shining. That’s just how Miami was. We planted the right seeds to bloom in the next few months, even as the temperatures dropped in the night, and the air became dryer. 

“What is?” I asked, thinking about plants and growth and life and how it’s all tied together. I expected my mom to say something about sunshine or water or watching something grow from nothing. There were a hundred little lessons my parents wanted to impart each day. Always something new, something to reflect on. 

Instead, she placed a soil stained palm on my cheek. Wrinkles had sunk deep within the skin by her eyes, no longer hidden by makeup or youth. “Having a friend.”

“Now don’t get ahead of yourself,” I said, a laugh in my tone. I pressed my cheek against her hand for just a second, breathing in the scents of earth and flowers and her musky, sweet perfume. “No one ever said a word about friends.”


	4. Chapter 4

“At least it’s not another charity function,” Traci commented, hands clasped behind her back. She had chosen to transfer to my college for the semester. She lived in a private apartment with her personal security team directly next door, chaperoning her to and from classes, the grocery store, and yoga. She was only a thirty minute car ride from the mansion and made good use of the proximity. We spent the start of the winter outside, walking trails on the grounds without anyone needing to follow us around. “More comfortable clothes.”

I snorted, arms crossing over my chest as the wind blew. The sun had gone behind a layer of cool, grey clouds and the air smelled of snow. “As if. Showcases mean more business attire. I’d rather be sexy and fancy than stiff and uncomfortable.” 

The grass was yellowing in the dry winter air. It trembled in the wind. It would be smarter to head back towards the house, but we both naturally turn away, choosing the opposite direction instead. “Fine. At least you aren’t taking a private jet home to celebrate Christmas with your family.”

“A private jet?” I gasped, hands coming to cover my mouth in mock horror. “Oh god, how ever will you survive something so cruel?”

“Would you care to trade?” she deadpanned.

I threw my head back laughing as I slung an arm around Traci’s shoulders for a brief moment. “I would rather eat my own hand.” 

There was a ping indicating a new notification and I grabbed my phone. I could practically hear the smaller woman roll her eyes next to me. 

“Do you care to share with the class?”

“Hm?” I didn’t look in her direction until the phone was back in my coat pocket. 

Traci tutted, annoyance in her voice. “Who the hell are you talking to?”

I hesitated, trying to think of a lie. A few dead leaves blew across the path in front of us and rattle their way back over to the otherwise immaculate grass. 

“Just...someone,” I shrugged. 

“You have a million friends.” That was true. Every event or party or panel, I knew someone. “You don’t jump at the chance to answer everything they say.”

Hands shoved in my pockets, I offered another shrug. “Maybe I just like this one more than the rest of you.” Traci didn’t respond, making us walk in silence. The trees at the edge of the property shook with the gusts that had not let up. “She’s, um, Arryn?”

Traci’s boot snagged on the pavement as she came to a stop, blinking in my direction. “Bernal? The woman you’ve been bitching about for six months now?”

“I have not been-”

“God, you’re such a lesbian,” she groaned causing me to laugh before giving her a gentle shove with my shoulder. I noticed the soft look on her face but didn’t say anything. 

\-----

“I think it’s all overrated,” I said, phone squashed between my ear and shoulder. I was making up the guest bedroom with white, starched sheets. The windows are thrown open to allow for the rush of fresh air to fill the room. 

My family didn’t have anyone extended to invite to stay with us, my grandparents were all dead, and my singular aunt lived in Texas with a loud, consistent disdain for travel by airplane. Once a year at Christmas time, we opened our home to a group of employees, hosting a grand dinner. The giant dining room was freshly waxed to bring out its shine. We wore our best dresses and jewelry but celebrated the eve of the holiday amongst the people who supported this company. 

It was nice in theory, but it quickly became overcrowded. There were always those who failed to remain sober enough to get home, taking up a bed for the night in one of the otherwise rarely used guest rooms. 

There was the roar of an engine revving on the other line. _Figures she would be making some bad decision or another in the name of Christmas fun,_ I couldn’t help but think. " _I disagree_ ,” Kara shouted over the noise. “ _Christmas is over commercialized. I’ll give you that._ ”

Maybe it was my recent desire to spend as much time alone as possible, but I had a hard time not disagreeing. “Well, what are your plans?” I had given a brief explanation of what my family did, even snapped a picture of the dress I was to wear and sent it her way. 

“ _You’re listening to ‘em now_.” I rolled my eyes at another loud rumbling through my speaker. But I could picture Kara, fitted leather jacket, bright yellow helmet, hair spilling out behind her in the wind as she weaved her way up a mountain or down a coast. Somewhere beautiful, that’s where I was inclined to imagine her. 

I didn’t consider why. “Dirt biking through flaming hoops again?” There was a rush of wind crackling through. I saw Kara’s body hunching over as she gained speed, racing forward on an open stretch of road. 

_“They weren’t on fire,_ ” she corrected like it made a difference. _“I’m, uh, I’m road tripping home.”_

“Home?” I asked before I remembered. “Right. Merton.” I tucked a corner of the sheet under the mattress, pulling the sheet taut as I’d once been taught to do. We only had a singular worker inside the house. My dad always said we could handle caring for ourselves well enough.

Somehow Kara managed to speak over the outside noise. “ _Been reading up on me, have you?_ ” Her tone was leering, a bait asking to be taken. “ _I can’t blame you. I know I carry quite the air of mystery._ ”

I rolled my eyes, glancing towards the mirror where I caught the smile on my face before pressing my lips together. “If that’s what you want to call tabloid headlines, sure.” 

There was a lot of drama when Alyce became CEO of Knox Communications. There were those who didn’t approve of her. They came for her past career mistakes, her drunk of a brother, and finally, the daughter she had previously failed to mention in any capacity. Two weeks later, Kara appeared, smiling at her mother’s side with a resemblance that wasn’t overtly obvious, but still there. 

_“The tabloids had really ought to find something more interesting worth reporting on._ ” 

She sounded irritated, more than I expected, and it's a habit, a muscle too well toned and practiced to ignore. I went right for distraction, to smooth over the conversation before it derailed. “So you spend Christmas back with your dad?”

“ _And sister,_ ” she added, her voice immediately lighter, gentler, how I had come to know it even with all of the volume she tended to project. “ _Ruby’s a couple of years younger than me. She’s a total genius though_.”

There was no denying the pride in her voice. “You sound like you really love her,” I lowered myself to the floor and pressed my back against the mattress and knees to my chest. My eyes remain fixed towards the opposing wall and lower edge of the window. It felt a little like I was hiding, maybe that’s exactly what was happening. “I’m sure it’s hard, being away so much.”

A sharp intake of breath that I somehow caught through surging winds and the growling engine. “ _Yeah_ ,” and now she sounded not proud or angry or joyful, just sad. 

A handful of conversations just like this one, and I had come to realize just how well I had gotten at listening to Kara, at reading her. She was the rare sort who never covered her tone, never masked it with anything. How she sounded was how she felt, I got to learn that through a speaker on the other side of the country, I got to figure it out while still feeling safe.

“Did you…” this was uncharted territory. It’s not that I was subscribed to Kara Monthly or anything, but I had read my fair share of interviews and caught her public appearances. For the sake of knowing how she was to be marketing with, of course. “Um, did you spend a lot of time with your dad when you were younger? Or your mom?”

There was the rush of air, a speed that only gained. There was a loose exhale, rushing from lungs. There was the steady thrum of an engine, consistent enough to become an odd white noise. “ _I don’t really talk about that sort of stuff,_ ” she said the words slowly like she was thinking through the answer more than she did before diving out of a plane.

“I’m sorry,” I rushed out of instinct. I stood in haste as if there was somewhere to hurry to. The floorboards creaked beneath my feet, my shadow was cast against the wall by the lamplight illuminating the room in the late afternoon. I pulled the curtains shut, leaving the glass flung open so the humidity couldn’t get trapped again throughout the day. “I didn’t mean to-”

“ _It’s okay,_ ” Kara was quick to reassure. “ _Don’t worry._ ” There was an intention behind her words, like she really meant them. “ _The media knows the topic is blacklisted_ ,” she laughed lightly, but it wasn’t very convincing. 

Unfolding the comforter, I got a whiff of the back of the wardrobe it’d been stored in, cedar and mothballs. “We all have our lists, don’t we?” 

There was a beat before Kara answered, “ _I’ll show you mine if you show me yours._ ” 

_Ridiculous_. “And why would I do that?” I posed the question with a hint of flirtation in my voice like I was edging towards something a little less known, a little more uncertain. It was just the sort of thing Kara seemed to love. 

“ _You can’t fool me_ ,” she murmured, the background noises now silent. I didn’t know if I should picture her at a red light by a gas station or the driveway of her dad’s home. “ _I know you’re dying for the answer_.”

“Goodbye, Kara.” I hung up before risking the chance of making a confession I hadn’t come to accept yet.

\-----

Merton had been the only world I had known before Alyce had swept in during my senior year of high school. Sure, we took a few vacations here and there to some touristy spots in Seattle, but Merton was my home. I knew when the trees bloomed bright blossoms and when the weeds poked through the cracks in the sidewalk. I knew where the best sledding hills could be found after a blizzard and which movie theater sold the cheapest candy. 

I had been planning to go away to a state school that following fall anyway, but still close. I had already made a deal with Ruby to come home at least one weekend a month and to talk my unknown roommate into letting her sleep on the floor of our dorm for overnights. 

Then Alyce showed up. 

It’s not like I didn’t know my mother was climbing the ranks at the company she worked for. It was just that it only mattered so much when you’ve met her a grand total of three times in your whole life. But number four was Alyce on my doorstep, phone in hand, bag hanging off her arm. She was impatient but said she felt like she should explain in person. She didn’t really ask me or Dad, just explained what had been running through the gossip mill and was bound to be published first thing tomorrow if it wasn’t already circulating online. She talked about damage control. About image. About opportunities. 

The list of things she did not talk about was a lot longer.

I finished my senior year half in person and half online, I wrote essays on my phone in the middle of dress fittings. I dropped out of my state school and was arranged to attend a private college in September.

The memories were unwelcome but present as I propped my bike on its kickstand and slid the helmet from my head. The chill had only further seeped in the closer I got, and now I stood in front of my home with a freshly shoveled driveway, sprinkled with salt, the mailbox still crooked in the ground from when our dumbass neighbor had backed into it. 

Coming back was weird because it felt like I should never have left. Time had kept moving forward without me, and when I reappeared there was still a moment, an adjustment, that I wasn’t used to. A new shelf on the wall, half the posters in Ruby’s room gone, one of our favorite diners closed. Little pieces of things I would never have missed. 

It was easy to blame it all on Alyce, for taking me away, but I knew part of this is just growing up.

“Kara!” The door slammed against the walls as Ruby threw it open, taking hurried, uneven steps down the stairs and throwing herself into my arms. Regardless of her age, she was still the same kid I would wait for on the steps outside of our elementary school, walking home together hand in hand. 

I was laughing without realizing it, squeezing Ruby hard enough to lift her off of her feet. “It hasn’t been that long,” I said while also trying not to cry, while also continuing to laugh. Gods, I was gonna go crazy.

The light from the doorway shifted and my dad was in the doorway, slippers on his feet, hair a little mussed. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, smiling. “Hey, kid,” he said just loud enough to be heard over the wind.

My hand tightened on the strap of my backpack. I made my way up the half shoveled steps, made all the more slippery for it, and hesitated for just a minute before throwing my arms around my dad’s neck, breathing in the scent of firewood and aftershave and dried ink. He smelled like childhood.

I pulled back, fighting down emotions I wasn’t expecting to have. The call with Arryn on the way over had left me with feelings all drugged up, regrets and questions, and a distinct taste of missing someone or something. Maybe just nostalgia in general, but it wedged its way into my chest and refused to ease up until I pulled onto familiar roads, until I saw the lights twinkling on my rooftop, until I was outside a home that I had once dreamt of running away from and one I ached to return to since the day I left. 

There was a half finished pizza on the counter, an open bottle of beer in the living room, a basket full of clean laundry on the landing of the stairs. It was somewhere between clutter and chaos and that was good enough for me. Inside was warm, the fire strong and bright, and I shed my jacket, propping it on the end of the banister. 

Ruby was pushing a plate of pizza slices and jalapeno poppers into my hands, grabbing me a drink from the fridge. “How have you been? How was your ride over? Are the roads getting bad yet? Is Traci in town yet? Why didn’t you bring her? You should have brought her.”

“Breathe, Ruby,” I said, pinching the back of her arm and stealing the plate as I flopped onto the living room floor. The TV was on, one of those old claymation Christmas movies playing in the background. “Traci had to go home to spend Christmas with her family.”

Nose wrinkling, Ruby sat next to me and propped her elbows on the coffee table, back against the old blue couch that had only gotten scratchier and lumpier every time I had come home. The rug beneath us was soft and plush, about seventeen years newer than any furniture in this room. 

Eyes fixed on my plate, I looked straight ahead, finding the same photograph that has been there for most of our lives. The two of us, Ruby still chubby cheeked and me missing one of my front teeth, each propped on one of Breanna’s legs, smiling widely up at her, a kiss to Ruby’s cheek and fingertips wrapped tight around my waist. It was easier, back when I saw that picture every day. But now, now it hurt differently, now it made me want to tear it down, turn it the other way around. Now I hurt, and I had forgotten exactly how to process it, push it down.

“It’s dumb to fly the whole way home,” Ruby critiqued, stealing a fried snack off of my plate. “She doesn’t even like them.”

“Do you really think she has a choice?” I muttered around a bite, unfairly irritated. _Hasn’t it been long enough for her to understand none of us do?_ “Be realistic, Ruby.”

It was not really harsh, but Ruby seemed to deflate a little. This is what the adjustment period meant, going from two sisters who used to rip out each other’s hair and tell each other to shut the fuck up twelve times a day to two people who didn’t quite know where the lines were, how personally something should be taken. 

“How’s school?” I asked with my shoulder bumping against her’s, an olive branch. “Did they give you a Nobel Peace Prize yet or what?”

“Kara,” she whined. 

I pulled Ruby in and rubbing my knuckles against her head until she was groaning and flailing around violent enough to get me to release her. “You’re amazing, you know that?” I asked, swept up in feeling bad for all the things I had missing even when I was here. “Don’t forget us when you’re rich and famous.”

She rolled her eyes pushing at my shoulder. “I’ll be forgetting you first,” she grumbled, continuing to snack off of my plate, eyes fixed on the TV.

\-----

Sometime just before midnight, I was up, unable to sleep as I tossed and turned in my old childhood bed that now felt a lot less cozy than it once had, my legs a little too long and my back a bit too accustomed to memory foam and quilted mattress toppers. Through the walls, an anime theme song played every twenty or so minutes, and I could picture my little sister slumped over on her pillows, light from the television cast on the walls, a small puddle of drool collecting. Just like when we were kids. 

The kitchen was a mess, and it had been almost six months since the last time I had done any dishes. Most of what was scattered around were paper plates and empty cans, but I filled up the recycling bin and scrubbed off forks and ice cream bowls with chocolate sauce glued to the sides. 

A light flicked on, and I jumped. My dad is standing behind me, same old spiderman t-shirt and plaid pajama pants, same old look of exhaustion in his eyes. “Can’t sleep?”

The sponge lathered when I squeezed it, tiny bubbles of lavender scent wafting up to my face. “You could say that.”

We loved each other, plain and simple, but there was baggage between us, memories and hopes and disappointments that muddled up a relationship that never really stood a chance of being traditional from the start. “How have you been?” I presented the question more like an interrogation than a request. “Really.”

He sighed like just the effort of listening to the question made him tired. “I’m hanging in there.” And that was the truth. That was the same response he had been giving since we stood clustered by a casket all those years ago.

“Care to elaborate?” The water ran off the plate, washing away the suds and bubbles before I propped it on the drying rack. 

Barefoot steps approached behind me, a hand on my shoulder. “It’s not your job to worry about me.”

“I’m not,” I said, and I didn’t know if it was the truth or not. All I knew was that I worried about plenty of things and only sometimes did I stop to include my dad on that list. Maybe it was more of a guilt thing than an anxiety thing. “Just want to make sure you aren’t letting Ruby come home to chaos all the time.”

His hand dropped away, and he leaned back against the kitchen counter, turning his head so he could look directly at me even when I made no attempt to meet him halfway. “I’m doing alright. I’ve got things under control. Okay?”

I loved my dad, I really did, but there was something about looking him in the eye, about hearing him say those words, that just made me angry. Almost like I wished he wasn’t, like I preferred him falling apart. “Good for you.”

The clock on the microwave flipped over to twelve. I thought about causing drama for the sake of it. Acting like the teenager I was the last time I lived in this house, slamming doors and shouting curse words because there was so much rage, and I never figured out how to release it, where it could go. But instead, I turned off the sink and reached for a towel. I propped myself up on the counter and stared down at my dad who had a hand running down his face. 

“I’ve missed you,” I went for instead. 

He looked up at me, but he was not actually smiling. It was not pancakes and snow forts and off key singing, but it was something. It was the truth. “I’ve missed you too.” 

The silence was awkward between us because this was the point where Ruby wrapped her arms around us both and pulled us in for a hug. This was the part where I threw my bag over my shoulder and rode off once again. This was the part where the conversation ended.

But this time, I didn’t jump off the countertop and stretch my arms overhead. This time he didn’t yawn and take a few steps back towards the stairs. We were both just kind of there. Waiting.

“How is… how’s your mom?” he asked, which was potentially the worst thing he could have said.

And here’s why we tended to end the conversation at the I miss you’s and I love you’s and call it a day. I sat up straight, teeth grinding down. “Alyce is the same as ever.” 

There was a distinction, and I clung to it. Alyce wasn’t my mom, and it didn’t matter how many years we lived in the same mansion, how many events I was dragged to, dressed up for. No amount of interviews could ever change the truth I had grasped as a pre-teen who had an opportunity slammed shut in my face, who felt a sense of loss too many times. Breanna was my mom. My mom was six feet under, just like she had been for fifteen years now. 

“I hope you two are at least getting along some?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at me. His foot tapped against the faded linoleum, a nervous habit. 

“It’s been four years, Dad,” I commented like he didn’t know. “We get along the same as we always have.”

The silence lasted for too long and that’s how I knew he was about to say something I didn’t want to hear. “Just…” he started, stopped, and my muscles were locked in place, my fists clenched. I didn’t even breathe, just waited instead of storming out before he could say something bound to piss me off. “Have you given her a chance?”

“Ha!” I said too loudly with Ruby asleep upstairs. “Why?” I insisted on an answer worth listening to.

“Well, she is your mother and-”

“No.” I jumped down, exhaling harshly and ignoring the lump rising in my throat. “I’m her pawn. The only reason I’m there is because the press found out about me and used me against her. The only reason I’m staying is because I help her image. Because the people started seeing a mom along with a businesswoman. Because the only thing that makes her seem human is _me_.” 

“Kara, I’m sorry. I-”

Head shaking, fists trembling. The whole situation made me angry, but my anger needed to be tamed, controlled, ignored. My position was too important to waste on rage. I could fly off the handle all I wanted in the privacy of the gods forsaken mansion, as long as the cameras weren’t there. But then no one cared, no one gave a shit. None of this was about me. It was about image, about being on top. “I never wanted this.” I was not crying, but I was frustrated. I was upset because home was now a vacation spot and the picture of Breanna in the living room was visible from the doorway, and I forgot just where I had to kick my closet door to make it open. My world was taken from me all so I could serve a purpose, do something bigger than myself. Do something I never wanted to.

“I know.”

“You knew and you didn’t do a damn thing.” And that’s what it boiled down to, how it simplified. There was too much covering the truth, layers and pieces obscured it, but when it came down to it, and I hunted for breaking points and disappointments and fault lines, that’s where it started. “You said I should go. You told me I should ‘take the opportunity.’”

“C’mon, Kara, you know-”

“No! I don’t!” I got in his face, and I didn’t know if I was crying or screaming or whimpering. But I knew that no one else cared when I got like this, that my anger didn’t hurt anyone else, and he had a right to it as much as the rest of them. “The only thing I know is that you pushed me to do this bullshit and I’m still here, stuck in it, wrapped up in shit I never cared about, playing some power game with people I don’t like, manipulating the media for a company I support but a mother who I don’t trust in the slightest.”

I stepped away, found that I could breathe again, that my muscles were relaxed, that the fight was gone out of me. “All I know is that you didn’t even make a case against her as to why I should stay.” I stalked out of the kitchen before he could say anything else.

\-----

The sun wasn’t even up yet when my phone started to ring. Last night I hadn’t drunk a single drop of alcohol, and still, my head was pounding. Eyes cracking open, I glanced at the digital clock tucked behind the flowers I had been presented as a joke from Marni last night. Just past six.

It was too early to justify a call, which was the part that caught my attention. It was the only reason I rolled to my other side and grabbed my phone off the charger on the nightstand. Flipping it over, my heart moved to my throat at the name that flashed on the front. 

“Kara?” I answered without another thought, even though a month ago, I would have rolled my eyes and hit the silence button. Now I felt inclined to answer. Now I thought maybe I even wanted to. “Isn’t it like, three in the morning for you? Are you okay?”

There was no answer for a minute, and I sat up, the quilt slipping away from my body and my hair falling in disarray. 

“ _I’m fine, sorry._ ” Her voice didn’t sound right, didn’t match the tone and cadence I had become accustomed to. “ _Just, uh, wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas before your day got busy. I’m heading to bed_.”

There was a rush on the other end that sounded like the same wind I had heard the day before, no revving engine to match it this morning. “My day won’t be busy for a bit,” I yawned, falling back amongst the pillows, “if you want to talk for a little bit.”

It was bolder than I normally went with because I didn’t know what this was between us, if it counted as friends or flirting for the sake of pissing people off. I didn’t know how sincere any of this was meant to be, but trust was fickle, hard to find, and harder to keep. “ _It’s nothing. I had a fight with my dad is all and, ugh. I’m sorry. This is stupid_.”

“I don’t think it is,” I found myself whispering, my face half buried in the pillowcase. The pounding behind my eyes didn’t relent, but it did seem less important, like I had other things worth considering first. There was my past creeping up beside me, how I would have said those same words, try and shrug it off and pretend it wasn’t real at all. I recall the words I needed to hear instead. “Do you want to talk about it?”

More silence and I could see her now, the trees looming in the shadows, the wind cutting through her front yard, arms crossed over an old pajama shirt, and feet shoved into snow boots with the laces still untied.

For a long time, Kara said nothing. “ _You know how something could have happened an entire lifetime ago, but you can’t… no matter what you do, you can’t let it go._ ”

I swallowed, feeling small and exposed despite being buried beneath covers an entire continent away. I felt like all those times I had pictured Kara, maybe she had seen me too. “Yes.” It was a confession whether she knew it or not, a truth I had buried so deep, never for anyone else to have access to, no one else allowed to exploit. “I do.”

“ _That’s what it’s like between us._ ” And she sounded resigned, surrendered. I imagined her sitting on her front doorstep, snow soaking her sweatpants and lips turning blue. I imagined her breath coming out in clouds of condensation. “ _All this shit that happened when I was seven or seventeen, and I can’t let it go. I can’t forgive him even though I know like, he did what he could. But I’m holding this grudge and… I take all this anger out on him. Even if it’s not meant just for him._ ”

“Yeah,” I agreed, teeth digging into my bottom lip. “Anger can be scary,” I admitted, and I didn’t mean just when it was directed at me, even though that was the part that always seemed the worst, the part everyone always focused on. I meant the anger inside of you, the way it could grab hold of your common sense and your rational behaviors and twist them all to shreds, trample them down until there was nothing more than a demon inside of you, and they were finding their way out. 

Maybe there were Christmas lights across the street, definitely a motorcycle parked in the driveway, next to a four-door sedan, and a dog bowl on the porch. It fit. _“I don’t want to feel this way anymore, so I try and convince myself I don’t but then…_ ”

“Yeah.”

“ _Yeah_.” She sighed. “ _I’m sorry, this probably wasn’t how you wanted to start your Christmas,_ ” she laughed in a rush of an exhale, and I considered masks versus the truth and which was easier to look head on and embrace. 

It was not so much a decision as a risk I decided was worth taking. “It’s okay. Not really something I was looking forward to anyway.”

“ _Why?_ ” she asked without hesitation, relieved to have moved past herself and onto someone else no doubt. 

That answer was multi-faceted, it was too clunky to give in its entirety and too complex to narrow down to an easy solution. “It’s been a few years since I was home to celebrate.” There was an undercurrent of something more, a promise of truth with a gentle reserve still tethered tight. Eyes fixed on the ceiling, the fan making its rotation and a soft breeze pushed down. There was something to be said about circles, how easy it was to trace the same path over and over. 

“ _Right_ ,” Kara answered without asking for more. 

“So I kind of get awkward family encounters right now,” I said, trying to connect like you’re supposed to with a friend. “I hope things work out between you and your dad,” I offered lamely instead of giving anymore of myself.


	5. Chapter 5

For a handful of generations, the kid of the Novak Motors had thrown the New Year’s Eve party to beat all other parties. Every year there were new themes, live celebrity performances, a private fireworks show, all at a fancy building along the beach. This was not for the heads of companies but exclusively reserved for their children. It was a privilege allotted to those a degree away from power but forced to wear its responsibilities regardless. Those in the Rich Kid Club. It had been a few years since the current CEO had any teens or young adults in the house, but that did not interrupt the tradition. 

To Arryn 8:32 am > catch you in virginia this weekend? ;) 

I asked my first morning back in the mansion. Three days before being on a plane to Virginia Beach, where I’d be conducting a handful of interviews and a charity event with Angelina Mercer. 

_Arryn 8:33 am > Not usually my thing _

My lips pulled down in disappointment. It’s not like I _wanted_ wanted Arryn to be there. More that it would just be… nice. I had plenty of friends who’d be there, and the surplus of alcohol alone was promising enough. I could even bring Ruby if I asked. Hell, probably even if I didn’t. But having Arryn there would be, like nice or something. 

To Arryn 8:34 am > maybe it should be 

I added a shrugging emoji, practicing nonchalance. There had been something that transpired between us over Christmas, an intimacy that made me almost ache to see her, to speak not with a speaker pressed against my ear, to hold her gaze and just watch her. 

To Arryn 8:34 am > i for one will be looking amazing. you don’t wanna miss that. 

There was a beat, a moment where she said nothing at all, and I was ready to try another angle. To try anything because maybe I did want Arryn to be there. Maybe it was a borderline need. 

_Arryn 8:36 am > I mean when you put it like that. _

And it was only a handful of minutes later before I had a picture on my phone of Arryn in a fitted black dress, hair grazing on her shoulder, a half smile tugging on her lips. 

_Arryn 8:39 am > What do you think? _

I didn’t have oxygen, didn’t have a single breath of air, and I was glad that Arryn wasn’t in front of me, relieved that I didn’t have to admit what was happening inside of me through expressions and glances and an embarrassing inability to breathe. I was grateful I had a chance to edit what I said next. 

To Arryn 8:40 am > i think it’d be a shame if i didn’t get to see you in that in person. 

The next morning I had a picture of the ‘Yes’ box checked on the RSVP and not even Alyce could sour my mood at breakfast.

\-----

I adored the sights of Virginia Beach. So really, I would have attended this party almost regardless, but I had left the RSVP unanswered for two full weeks before Kara had messaged me. The text had sent my heart racing in my throat, my pulse quivering at possibilities promised. 

_This is nothing_ , I told myself in my hotel room as I dressed for the evening. I did my own hair and makeup as I did for most events. Tonight I curled the top layer of hair, giving the bob I cut it into a few months before an extra layer of texture. I lined my eyes with a deep black pencil. 

The dress slipped on perfectly, tailored to fit me just right. The straps were thin, and a slit ran up the side to my thigh. A jeweled necklace around my throat with deep purple earrings hanging from my ears. Simple, elegant, nothing flashy but just enough to catch some eyes, to catch Kara’s.

There was a singular guard to escort me to the party. Though my family would never pay for the extravagance, Mr. Santana had reserved a room for me at the finest hotel, one that sat next to the beach. Outside of my window, I could see the ocean stretching into the distance. It was almost entirely covered in snow this time of year, not so much a dusting as a drenching. 

The building in which the event was held has been transformed. They went with a tropical theme this year. A lei made of real flowers was strung around my neck as we climbed the stairs, and I laughed to myself as one is slipped over the head of my guard. “Pink complements you,” I joked and received not even an inkling of a smile in return.

The band on stage wore their shirts open, hair tousled, as they played songs with heavy bass and even heavier drum beats. There were island themed snacks which I appreciated. Pina Coladas on trays, shrimp cocktail, coconut covered cookies. Little tiki torches rested in the chandeliers, their flames more decorative than to light anything.

My heels clicked against the hardwood, and I was grateful they hadn’t gone to the measure of covering it with sand. This was the part where my guard bowed his head and stepped to the side of the room to monitor, but mostly to convene with fellow security detail.

Caitlin found me first, all but screaming as she approached, dragging Angelina and Mia forward by their arms. We hugged even without the cameras present.

That was the beauty of this event. All of the cameras had to wait outside. The exclusivity made them all the more curious, leaving them lining the sidewalks and exits for over a mile by the end of the night. 

“You made it!” Caitlin shouted, even though I had never told her I was coming. “You have to try the smoked salmon.”

“And soon,” Mia added with a smile, “before Caitlin eats it all.”

I laughed with them, but I was scanning the room, searching with intention.

“I haven’t seen her yet,” Angelina said quietly in my ear. I blushed and didn’t respond. “I’m happy you were able to make it this year.” 

Last year everything had still been too fresh, too new and old all at once. I wasn’t ready to tackle parties and events at that time. And the previous few years… well, it’d been a while since I had attended. 

“Whoa,” Caitlin said with no degree of subtlety when the doors opened once more. 

It was Kara. She wore a simple white dress with gold accents all along it and a lei of purple flowers around her neck. She had half her hair pulled on top of her head, secured in an elegant bun that looks far simpler than it must have been to accomplish. The dress left her arms bare and swayed loosely at her hips, begging for her to dance. 

Except Caitlin wasn’t even looking at Kara, which seemed like a sin, her eyes were fixed on Kara’s guard who had two leis of pink flowers around his neck and a look of wonderment in his eyes as he glanced around the transformed room. Mia simply rolled her eyes.

“Yeah,” I responded without meaning to. “I’ll, uh, catch you guys later.”

Caitlin was already walking towards Kara, exchanging brief pleasantries before redirecting her attention. And Angelina was at my ear again, whispering just above the music. “The whole room is looking at her,” she said, and I broke my gaze to confirm the claim. Even the band has eyes on Kara, on the way she illuminated the space she was in, how the gold of her bodice almost shined in the lights of the room. It was unnerving how dedicated the attention was to her. “But she’s looked nowhere but at you.”

I swallowed and approached Kara with measured, steady footsteps. I thought of all our encounters before, of bickering and arguments, of the irritation that rode beneath our words. And then I thought of calls and funny texts, and the sound of her voice on Christmas morning. 

“Hey,” I breathed in her direction, and, though I was dressed in every degree of finery, found that she only cared to watch my face, my eyes.

Kara, ever the picture of confidence and nonchalance, scanned me up and down before landing on my eyes. Her irises were a deep green in this light. “I was right,” she said.

“About what?” I swallowed and thought about kissing her, about how easy it would have been, about how much I wanted to do it when before the thought never crossed my mind.

“Definitely deserved to be seen in person.”

And there were a hundred different responses flitting around in my head, but I skipped words, instead offering my hand as a new song began to play, the energy of the room shifting and swelling until there was no choice but to follow along with it. “Shall we?”

Kara smiled, and she was not at all arrogant or cocky or infuriating. She was gentle when she took my hand, following my lead. “I thought you’d never ask,” she commented finally, hand on my hip and eyes unafraid, unabashed. And there was no space between us but floating in its non-existence was the beginnings of a history, the promise of a future neither of us could quite realize. 

“Didn’t realize you were waiting for me to,” I answered with my hips shaking and a sheen of sweat on my forehead from the heat of bodies packed around. 

Kara was watching me, clearly more attuned to me than the room or the music or her own movements. “Neither did I.”

\-----

It was easy to lose yourself to the thrum of a party, the heady haze of alcohol and heavy beats, the intoxication of fellow party-goers moving around you, existing on this same plane. But I forgot about them. I forgot about the thrum of the bass in my chest, about the room full of important people with important titles going absolute apeshit with the freedom allotted for tonight alone. 

Tonight, I was lost in the only person I’d been waiting for, the only one I cared at all about seeing. My gaze was held by brown eyes glowing gold, by deep purples, by hips that swayed, and a neck that dipped back, open and exposed. My eyes were caught on red, full lips and the distinct way they twitch upwards when our eyes met. 

Traci ended up beside us, a few people down from Angelina. “Will you just _go_ ,” I shouted with a shove of my shoulder against her back to ease her towards that side of the dancefloor. 

She stumbled forward but fell back to my side. “I can barely breathe in here,” she yelled back, all dramatics and excuses.

I rolled my eyes and looked to Arryn, using the flow of music as an excuse to run my fingers over her arm, lingering for a second on the inside of her wrist. “Wanna get outta here?”

Eyebrows shot up in surprise, and she seemed to try and consider if my suggestion was even viable. And there was danger in her smile, a promise of something messy and disastrous tucked at the edges of her lips. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

I stepped into her, pressing our foreheads together and drawing a deep breath, the air distinctly tinged with cigarettes and weed and a hundred different expensive perfumes all swirled into one. And there, just beneath it all, was a tinge of jasmine and a hint of lavender, there was something I had come to distinctly recognize, to crave. 

“Nope,” I answered with a smirk. “Personally, though, I’m a big fan of risks.”

And Arryn reached out, twisting our fingers together, palms pressed close. “I think I’m starting to see the appeal.”

We slipped out the employee entrance, Traci and Angelina tailing us. Some wait staff definitely noticed us, but no one in a crisp white shirt and solid black tie was going to put a stop to us, and security was at the door, vigilant and cautious but Arryn nodded, all authority to which they stepped aside without question. Their job was to keep people out, no one ever told them to make sure others didn’t leave.

Outside the air was crisp, cold. The snow had stopped. It laid in large drifts on the sides of the walkways, piling in perfect even lines almost to our hips. None of us were dressed for the weather, but we were warm on the alcohol still rushing through our bloodstreams, still drunk off the blurry rush of freedom to such a degree. 

Traci kept giggling, frankly a mess but still with pristine hair and untouched makeup, gown swirling by her ankles and high heels teetering on the sidewalks. Angelina slipped an arm around her shoulders when she stepped a little too close to the edge, unbalanced and overwhelmed. I wanted to shake my head but found how quickly I lost myself in Arryn’s stare, in how our palms were still warm where we were held together. 

“I think I know a place,” I smirked, and Arryn took suggestions and hints. “If you’re up for it, that is.”

Somewhere along the way, we lost Traci and Angelina, who ducked into a late night coffee shop. Angelina commented something about on needing to warm Traci up and Arryn muttered, “I’m sure you’re up for the task,” under her breath with me laughing beside her. 

The lights of the grocery store beckoned us, and really I didn’t know a damn place except for my hotel room, and it was too early for that, too rushed. It was late enough on New Year’s Eve that the twenty four hour store was cleared out besides for employees stocking shelves and a bored woman flipping through a magazine behind the counter. Arryn still had a tight hold on my hand, dragging me in.

“Do you know the last time I went grocery shopping?” I asked, lips slightly parted, partially entranced by the lights, the products, the colors. Even when I went home to Merton, I was to remain indoors as much as possible, draw as little attention to myself as I could. 

Arryn pulled a cart loose of the row, and I hopped lightly on the balls of my feet to the end of it, laughing as we disappeared down an aisle. 

“One thing you always want but never get to have anymore,” Arryn prompted, a bag of Sour Patch Kids hitting the plastic bottom of the cart. 

Everything was bright, burning against my eyes with colors illuminated in fluorescents, the light FM station playing a popular song from five years ago, the laughter that slipped free from my chest without effort. “Pop-Tarts,” I said without thinking too hard about it, a staple in the Hollis household.

The cart swung around haphazardly, and we wound up in the breakfast aisle, rows of cereal boxes with cartoon birds, bunnies, and tigers. There was a line of various Pop-Tart flavors, bright red cherry, vibrant purple berry, sprinkled covered strawberry. 

I stared between them all and deferred to Arryn, who hopped off of her chariot ride coming to stand beside me. “I don’t know,” I said, “sometimes decisions are the worst.”

And she was chewing her lip, she was glittering in the lights, she was happy, bright. “Only when you don’t know what you want,” she said and it was a challenge, a suggestion.

I swallowed, stare fixed ahead. An employee swept down the aisle with a mop in hand, light lemon cleaner scent left behind him as he went. “Maybe I just don’t know if the Pop-Tarts want me,” I said with a poorly disguised metaphor. 

She grabbed a box of cookies and cream right off the shelf, pressing it against my chest, letting her hand linger by my side as it dropped away. “I didn’t know you were the type to worry about that,” she said, brown eyes scanning, assessing everything they came across. “You don’t seem to worry about much at all.”

“There’s plenty I worry about,” I whispered under my breath, one hand holding an eight-count box of Pop-Tarts to my chest and the other itching, wanting, missing. “There are a lot of things I want that… don’t want me.” It was a confessional in the aisles of a twenty four hour market, a revelation admitted to oatmeal packets and Malt-O-Meal boxes. It was a truth usually so buried down in the dark just laid out here in the lights and colors and wonderment of a place so common, so definitely not special, that it didn’t feel quite so scary to face. 

And Arryn didn’t even look over her shoulder, didn’t even think or scan or worry, before leaning up on the very tips of her toes, looping an arm around my neck and pulling me down to press our lips together. Warm and gentle and wanting with how they held me in place, easing concerns while answering desires. 

“I don’t think you need to spend your time worrying about something like that,” she muttered when our lips were still centimeters apart, our breaths still warm on each other’s faces. We were both a little drunk, or maybe a lot, which is why we failed to recognize bad ideas, didn’t stop ourselves in fear of an unplanned press release or the knowledge that we lived on two different ends of the country, two different sides of the same society.

We kissed under the bright lights of the grocery store, the sound of fireworks booming in the sky heard from just outside. We kissed as the new year struck, and I found myself pleased that if I were to spend the rest of my year exactly like that, it would have been the best one yet.

\-----

We ended up at a table outside of the store, cold metal chairs biting through our dresses and the sharp rush of wind whipping against our exposed arms and red tinged cheeks every few minutes. 

There was shitty coffee for sale, so we drank barely lukewarm, watery coffee from paper cups with handfuls of candy, half-finished Pop-Tarts, and a bag of chips between us. _Forget a hangover. We’ll have food poisoning by morning._

It was so easy to be enamored by Kara, for me to find myself wrapped within her stratosphere, and just when I worried it was too much, too strong, I found her releasing me. I found that the choice never stopped being mine. 

We talked outside, sitting beside each other with our sides flush together in some small means of generating heat. We asked where the hell Angelina and Traci were, what they were possibly getting into, how much their security detail was suffering in a panic. 

A cart attendant pushed in a long row of clanking together shopping carts, not even glancing at us, two extravagantly dressed women enjoying candy that was partway frozen at an outdoor table on New Years’. 

“So,” Kara said, popping a handful of sour candy in her mouth without so much as wince against it. “Do you have any resolutions?” And just like before, everything was a challenge.

I rested my chin in my hand, body turned to take in the profile of Kara, the way her hair seemed to radiate even in the dying lights and her body remained warm beside me even as the wind howled. “I don’t know if I believe in them.”

Lingering close, eyes shifting and studying, she gave it a single minute before answering. “Liar.” She grinned cheekily.

She was right, but I refused to give her that. “Hm,” I answered, eyes fixed on her. Some part of me was still wrapped within the heady rush of our kiss, the dangers it posed and how none of it mattered at all because my world was simplifying to a point, to a future I felt I could trust in, “maybe it’s to tell the truth then.” 

Kara kissed me first this time, just an imperceptible lean in, and our lips were pressed together, the tinge of sour and sweet still lingering on her lips. “How would you feel if I told you my resolution was to let down my guard, with you, I mean.”

“I’d say that’s just another way of telling the truth.”


	6. Chapter 6

The city was overcast for days on end when I returned. I wore warmer layers than usual. A hoodie with my hands buried deep into the pocket and a beanie slipped low to cover my ears as I left the Bernal Tech Headquarters.

“I didn’t know you were here, homie!” a voice barked and I glanced in its direction. Justin rushed up beside me, throwing an arm around my shoulders, and smiled wide like we were old friends.

I stepped to the side, allowing his arm to drop. “And why exactly are you here?” 

“Maybe to see you.” He winked, and it was all wrong. It was the same sort of sunny optimism and overt joking that I was accustomed to in Kara but didn’t know how to accept in someone that it fit so different. 

“Uh-huh,” I shoved my hands deeper. There was a promise of rain in the air, but it was holding off. “Really, though.”

Justin walked easily beside me, arms swinging and shirt still wide open despite the cold breeze. So unashamed. “My cousin is checking out some of the new gizmos your parents got and let me tag along.”

I was hoping for a bit of solitude but now this buffoon, lovable or not, was at my side drawing attention with his abs and too loud voice. 

“That’s nice.” I decided to be as boring as possible to conceal that I wanted him to leave, making him think it was his idea. 

“You aren’t really the social type, huh?” Justin said like he hadn’t known me for the better part of a decade. “I remember you being a little more wild when we were kids.” 

“That was a long time ago.”

“So vague,” he leered, leaning into my space. “So serious.”

“Maybe I just want you to leave me alone.”

His eyes narrowed, backing off but not in the way I had anticipated. “Nah, I think it’s all a projection.”

“What?” Disdain coated my voice and I did nothing to cover it. 

His hand gestured to all of me. “Your whole moody and depressed vibe you’ve got going. It’s not really you.”

“You don’t know me.”

“You’re protecting yourself, I think. Something happened, or maybe it’s an heiress thing, but you’d rather alienate anyone than deal with the fallout of something going wrong.” Justin Fulton didn’t strike me as the perceptive type. More of the two brain cells maximum and lack of self restraint type. “You’re afraid. This moody and brooding part of you isn’t, like, _you_. It’s what you pretend to be.” He looked proud of himself. 

I hated him all the more for it. “Do yourself a favor and don’t act like you fucking know me.” He wouldn’t stop nagging me, and I was in no mood to put up with some random, no status California boy. “Just leave me alone, okay?”

“Eh, not my style, really.” When I stopped walking, so did he, posture relaxed and easy. “Hey, do they have any food around here? I am dying for something good.”

When I walked away, he followed right at my side.

\-----

“ _Can I ask you a question?_ ” Arryn whispered on the other line, voice crackling and weak like from a poor connection. Maybe a storm was blowing through Miami.

“Sure,” I responded with a light tone. I was still in bed. My hair fanned out on the pillows, teeth unbrushed, eyes only half opened. I wasn’t ready for heavy.

“ _Do you…do you think I’m projecting something I’m not?_ ”

The question was just vague enough, and there was too little coffee in my system to decipher hidden meanings and layers of truths. “It’s seven AM, darling. I’m going to need more.” The pet names were just a thing now, not quite a mockery but not really serious. They slipped loose. 

“ _Sorry_.” She sighed. She was never loud, impossibly unobtrusive while also being steadily, presently there. I felt like I could be beside her, wrapped loosely in sheets with her dark hair tumbling, her skin awash in the morning light. “ _Justin just said something and I-_ ”

“Justin?” I cut her off, pulled swiftly from the vision I had been losing myself in. “Justin Fulton? Cousin to the owner of Worley Studios?”

“ _That’s the one._ ” The words came out grumbled and cranky.

A sound of distaste rumbled from the back of my throat. That was the perfect way to describe Justin. Distasteful. “Need me to beat him up for you?”

There was a light laugh on the other end, the seriousness of my offer seeming to miss her entirely. “ _I just felt like he was telling me things about myself that I didn’t really want to hear. Or, maybe I didn’t like to think he could see them._ ”

“Arryn.” _Gods, I love her name._ Someone’s name shouldn’t be able to live inside of you the way Arryn’s did in me. It should not cause a rush of blood, a swelling in your chest, a stirring in your stomach. I was abruptly awake. “I’m going to say this as plainly as possible. Are you ready?”

The question was asked just because I really wanted to hear her say, “ _Yes._ ”

“Don’t listen to a goddamn thing coming out of that fucktard Justin’s mouth,” I declared without hesitation, eyes shut so she could imagine her beside me. “And you can quote me on that.” 

“ _Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?_ ”

“Fuck no.”

\-----

Headaches, they came with the territory. Certain pretenses had been relieved as years wore on. Dinners together, eliminated. Stilted conversations, reduced. A relationship that had never been anything but complicated now simplified. We were mother and daughter, but really we were queen and pawn. In time, it became easier to stop pretending there was anything additional at all. 

As I got older, I was almost expected to follow my mother’s role, become some big time businesswoman. I was meant to choose a major that aligned just right. I was expected to attend certain meetings and to hold opinions.

Really, I was utterly unqualified for this job no one had wanted in me, and yet I was expected to do it well anyway. It came with the territory. When Alyce was chosen, they had chosen her daughter as well, whether they knew it or not. Expectations were laid out, and the only thing worse than failing to do what was anticipated of me was not trying at all.

And that’s why I was there. That’s why it was a Tuesday morning, and there was a meeting being held on the connectivity of our networks. Part of Alyce’s job was assessing company resources and locating them to where she saw fit. That included new signal towers. 

The coffee had gone cold, a small collection of picked through bagels, mini muffins, and rejected fruit sat on the table in the corner of the room. One of the engineers was speaking, running through the recent trouble spots, areas that needed upgraded towers, and which areas were perfectly fine. I shifted, awake for once. 

“Well, what about these areas here?” I interrupted when he paused for a drink.

Heads turned in my direction. Alyce didn’t bother as she asked, “What about them?”

“Well,” I said, fingers plucking idly at a blueberry bagel, “we have enough new towers that we could easily spread them out in these trouble spots and strengthen their connection.”

“An excellent point, Ms. Roman,” the engineer responded in a manner that suggested he wouldn’t outright disrespect me, but it might be in my best interest to shut my damn mouth.

Chair legs scraped against the floor as I stood, arms crossing over my chest as I moved to the large scale map of America. “You have twice the towers in most cities than you should need.” 

“Kara-” Alyce went to cut me off but I grabbed a pen and started circling spots on the smartboard, adding little dots as an example of tower spacing. There weren’t enough at the moment, but certainly enough to start.

“I get that the higher populations in the cities need a larger connection, but with all of our towers, it only seems wise to put more up in less populated areas so they don’t have to worry about no signal.”

The heat kicked on in the room, a gentle hum filling the otherwise heavy silence hanging between them.

Alyce’s stare was fixed exclusively on me. I squared my shoulders, preparing to go on the defense, to support my statement unwaveringly. “No.”

“But-” I opened my statement with little more, being left with nothing to defend because there was no argument to fight against. Only refusal.

“Kara, sit down.”

Now it was just embarrassing. I had a role to play, one specifically cast for me with no room for interpretation. I stood there now, mouth open, lines forgotten. This was not agreed upon. The men and women in the room averted their gaze, aware they were witnessing more than a debate in signal tower locations or a dispute of professionals. This was a fight between a mother and daughter. This was a fight that had a winner before it was even begun. 

“Now,” Alyce cleared her throat, the word was spoken before the chair even creaked beneath my weight settling. “You were saying, Solis?”

There was a discussion between the engineer and Alyce. My writing was quickly erased and replaced with their own. Phone in hand, I pulled up my text messages without thinking too hard about who or why.

To Arryn 10:46 am > worst meeting you’ve ever had to attend? Go.

_Arryn 10:47 am > I’d say most of them. Though, I do have a special hatred for anything revolving around the budget. _

To Arryn 10:48 am > ah, but is that not every meeting? 

_Arryn 10:48 am > Touche. _

I thought about stepping out, not being missed, and calling to hear her voice. I shouldn’t think about things like Arryn’s voice or the curve of her lips or the slope of her shoulders. Yet it was all I could think of. 

_Arryn 10:50 am > What are you doing in an hour? _

The question made me smile despite how angry I was, regardless of how small I’d been made to feel or how pointless my presence was proven to be over and over again. You must be here, but you are not wanted. You are to be seen and not heard. You are invaluable but without worth. It was what no one said but seemed agreed upon by my mother’s entire team. I was the necessary evil of the narrative which had been forced on them. And there was nothing worse than to be made to feel like a child. An unwanted one at that. 

To Arryn 10:51 am > talking to you ;)

\-----

There was a pile of books laid out in front of me with a hundred different tabs opened to research articles on my laptop. I was three sentences into my research paper when my phone buzzed on the desk. 

Spinning in my chair so the mess of responsibilities was behind me, I answered with a smile. “Hey, babe,” I said with ease, tone airy. “What are you wearing?”

“ _Crocs, bell bottom jeans, and a Nickelback t-shirt_ ,” Arryn answered without missing a beat. “ _Do try and contain yourself._ ”

I fought back a laugh, “Stop flirting with me. Gods.”

“ _Bad meeting this morning?_ ” A harsh shift in conversation. It was disappointing. Our banter that skirted just on the edge of forbidden was one of my favorite parts of talking to Arryn. More than hashing out details like signal tower meetings and woe is me feelings. 

“What constitutes a good meeting?” I sighed, flopping back against my chair, legs thrown over the armrest as I slowly rotated to the side, eyes fixed on the bookshelf in front of me. It was covered in books on business. The exact sort of books that one would expect to find. “Did you ever read those books about the kids and their magic treehouse?”

And that was the thing about talking to Arryn, we could shift the conversation a hundred different times without it ever failing to feel natural. “ _When I was eight, yeah. Why?_ ”

“I used to read to Ruby all the time when we were kids,” I said, offering up a piece of my usually guarded past. It felt important to share a part of who I used to be when I could no longer remember how it felt to be that person. “It’s been a long time since I've read a book that was just… fun.”

“ _I read all the time_ ,” she said like it was a confession. That was the sort of hobby the media usually ran with, and it was Arryn admitting that which made it clear just how little anyone reported on her besides speculation pieces on where she had been and what trouble she was getting into now. It made me understand just how far Arryn had removed herself from their lens that not even this perfect hobby has been revealed about her. “ _I could recommend something. If you want, I mean._ ”

She rushed to correct herself like I would want anything else. “Only one condition.”

“ _What?_ ” she whispered like we were in the dark, like this was a place for secrets. Like she only wanted to hear what I had to say. 

There were voices in the hall and a list of things left to accomplish for the morning. But I was only thinking about Arryn, about secrets and truths and what it meant to give something of yourself that you’ll offer to no one else. “It has to be something you love.”


	7. Chapter 7

The lights overhead were glimmering. It was dim, an added element of excellence, while still shining in brilliance. The band stood to the right side of the room, strings swelled and surged, woodwinds filling the spaces of class with a touch of celebration. 

I stood outside the doors, reminded to square my shoulders just so, smile as I had been taught. Look presentable. The heels on my feet had been a fight. I had insisted, the same way I did with my makeup and my hair and the pieces of myself I fought to maintain as only mine. But now they felt too tight, the straps winding up my ankles and the heels a little too thin. Tonight I had opted for a dress that was the color of gemstones, rubies and golds, blended together so I would be drenched in fire. I was unobtainable. I was my own. Dressed in glitter and gold with a thousand tiny prisms cloaking the room in elegance, all eyes would be on me, but as my gaze slipped through the narrow crack of the double doors I was searching for only one person.

It was never the part of being the center of attention that put me on edge, that was a role I naturally assumed, slipped into with ease and comfort. But it was how I was not in a position of my own choosing, that I was meant to stand by and support someone else. Most interviewers expected me to simply parrot what Alyce preached, the same policies she presented. That was another fight. That was something I didn’t manage to hold onto quite as well. 

“Mind yourself,” Michelle whispered in my ear. She wore a fine, deep purple suit. Her perfume was sweet and musky, her hair done up in curls, and her makeup dramatic with winged eyeliner perfectly even. She must have gotten stuck with monitoring Kara duty tonight as Bethan was to be at Alyce’s side all night long. “This is arguably the most important event the media will cover before the big showcase,” she said like I didn’t know, like I hadn’t been here before, like my mother wasn’t the goddamn fucking CEO of the biggest communication company in the country. “No messes. No drama.” 

“Please,” I answered, looking over my shoulder to flash her a smile and bat my eyelashes. “Am I one to start any trouble?”

She cleared her throat and shook her head. “I’m not justifying that with an answer and you know exactly why.”

“Because you love me.” There was no time for Michelle to get the last word. I left that between us and stepped through the drawn doors, right at the head of the staircase. 

The room almost stopped movement altogether. I was not even close to the most important person here, but I was close enough. And where I lacked, my looks made up for. There was no denying this aspect was put to use. 

The first to greet me at the bottom of the stairs was Murry Newman, a deep bow of his head and his arm offered out. “It’s an honor to see you, Ms. Roman.” 

Four years ago, I would have corrected him, but that was a definition of trouble, a version of deviance. “Likewise, Mr. Newman.” Also, it was never worth it.

Traci was in the corner, hands empty but not placed on her hips or arms across her chest. She was talking with a definitive degree of animation, lips in a loose smile as she spoke. Of course, there would be no one across from her than Angelina Mercer, long red gown grazing the floor and head thrown back in laughter. 

In events so often void of life, there was beauty in witnessing a new blossom. 

“Kara.”

Heartbeat in my ears, oxygen caught in my throat, I turned. I found Arryn just behind me. “You look gorgeous,” tumbled from my lips without thought to censorship or caution. It was the exact sort of danger I had been warned against. A risk even I knew was not worth the adrenaline that pumped through my veins, couldn’t be worth anything at all, not in comparison to costs and consequences. 

Redness bloomed across her cheeks, but she didn’t look down or shy away. “I know,” she said instead, not with humor but confidence. I swallowed. “It’s been a few weeks. Figured I’d take a shower first.”

“So that’s the difference,” I said with a snap of my fingers. “I see it now.”

“It’s good to see you, Kara.” 

And there was the beginning of a history buried in those words, the makings of a past eeking out. There were phone calls cast in darkness, secrets whispered through the speaker, poetry scribbled onto stationary meant for calligraphy. There was a potential seeping through, a promise not realized. The front steps on Christmas morning, the empty dinner table, the wide open trails beneath bare branches. Emptiness no longer. A space filled. 

Then, there was another stockholder at my shoulder, firm handshakes as I was passed around the room and put to use. The food had been handed out to the tables before I was pulled out of the grasp of those demanding my time, my answers, my acknowledgment. 

The band played as the patrons carved into tiny, ornate salads for the first course. The woman beside me actually cut her lettuce into smaller pieces, knife scratching across the china. Traci was almost clear across the room at a table filled with others from the northwest. Even still, her table had two open chairs. Howard had rejected the invitation, not even sending his regards. The other was for her brother, Collin, who was still elsewhere in the world.

A tiny wave was all Traci offered from her corner of the room, looking miserable yet splendid in a long evening gown that fit her body just so and draped elegantly down to her feet, toes poking out in diamond studded strapped wedges from where she sat.

“And then I said, the clearance rack? Would you rather I just dress as an animal?” The entire table laughed, though it was clear no one found it funny. 

Somewhere halfway through the main course, fish with summer grilled vegetables and some ball shaped rice impersonator, the speeches began. 

This dinner, in theory, was to elevate Alyce as a CEO. It was meant to showcase all the things our company had done and bettered since she took over to be televised and gone viral through YouTube videos. It was a celebration of her time served as much as it was to show why people should choose Knox Communications over its competitors. Thus, the speeches are chosen with caution, pre-screened for appropriateness, ensuring nothing broaches on a subject better not remembered from the public en masse. It’s meant to appear sophisticated and elegant while also not being deemed a waste of money.

Cake, coffee, and dessert wine were being rolled out when Santana stepped forward, cards dropping behind the podium as he went to lay them out.

I groaned, the back of my legs itchy from the tulle beneath my dress, and the man beside me had a tick of a cough every twelve seconds that finally pushed me over the edge. I slid from my seat, winding my way through the tables filled with important people, vases of flowers, and half burnt candlesticks. 

There was an open seat beside Arryn. Maybe because someone had the good sense to get up and leave or perhaps because of a seating arrangement misfortune. Either way, I made good use of it. 

“How’s it going?” I asked, my practiced tone and even posture forgotten as I leaned back in the seat, pushing out with my toes so I was away from the table and just beside Arryn, allowing me to lean over and whisper directly into her ear with ease.

She cleared her throat, glancing from the stage to me for a mere second before reaching for a sip of her wine. “The last one of these I went to in Cleveland had musical performances.”

“So you visited hell briefly? Splendid.”

“I got you a magnet but left it at home.”

“You went to hell, and all you got me was a magnet? Now, Arryn, where is the courtesy?” 

She hummed, cake abandoned in favor of her wine. She leaned back and crossed one leg over the other, body angled in my direction. “I was a little distracted by my ears bleeding.”

“Pitiful excuse considering I went brain dead forty five minutes ago.”

“Is that all? I was sure it had to be at least three years by now.”

I laughed louder than I should. Santana was mid-comment of the tragic snowstorm two years ago. “Where did your dad go?”

Arryn shrugged. “Some of our employees don’t like him leaving so much for… bullshit like this. They find trouble to call him about.”

“And what about you?”

“He can do what he wishes with his time, as far as I’m concerned.”

“No,” I corrected, twisting around in my seat so I wasn’t even feigning attention towards the front of the room any longer. “What do they think of your absence?” 

A smattering of applause and Santana was done. No one would be mentioning a word about that speech tomorrow except to discuss how his fly was down. 

Aptly timed, as Alyce planned most things, the comedian went up, reawakening the crowd with a joke just close enough to be at Santana’s expense that it caught the audience off guard and turned the blandness into a distinct opportunity for humor. The room roared with laughter.

“I don’t think they have a… strong opinion of me.”

“Now, darling,” I taunted, leaning closer, forgetting about cameras and caution and comedy. I was attuned only to Arryn, “you know people have nothing but strong opinions, one way or the other.”

The whole room laughed, varying from polite giggles to a man in the corner bent over at the waist, wheezing.

Arryn’s head fell to the side, lips an inch from my ear, breath against my skin. “That doesn’t mean I care to think about them.”

“What do you care to think of?” I asked, frozen. I waited, to feel her breath against my body, to sense her so close once more.

Arryn sat back, crossing one leg over the other, and shot a look in my direction before looking towards the stage, smiling only to herself as the room chuckles. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” 

_Oh, she has no idea._

\-----

I wasn’t giving up my secrets quite so easily. I kept my lips pressed together after that, eyes fixed ahead on the stage in front of me. So many people here I had seen more times than I ever cared to, many I was expected to know but I could not recall a name to save my life at the moment. 

All I could think about was Kara beside me. All I could imagine were her lips, how they parted and pursed and stretched wide in smiles. My head was full of Kara Hollis-Roman, but I wasn’t about to admit that as truth. Better to leave her speculating, to allow for that brief flash of surprise and wonderment which crossed her face to remain stuck in my loop of thoughts, curious and unsure.

So the answer I gave was not with words. Somewhere around the third speech, my legs refused to sit any longer. My stomach was knotted, eager. I shot Kara a look, waiting to make sure she had seen, and then stood and exited the room without allowing myself to check over my shoulder to see if I was still being watched. 

The hallway was drenched in grandeur, cloaked in low lighting and dressed with fine curtains in deep reds. The rug beneath my feet was plush and squished beneath my heels. When the door to the ballroom next opened, it didn’t squeak but parted silently on its hinges. 

Maybe I was answering questions, but so was Kara.

I’d been watching her all night, and somehow I still lost my breath by the mere sight of her. An exhale caught in my throat, pupils blown wide, a heavy thumping in my chest that had nothing to do with fear or anticipation or worry and was only propelled by excitement, by desire. 

We didn’t speak a single word but communicated through a glance. A moment passed between us. I waited, leaving whatever to happen next in Kara’s hands. And there it was, the widening of a smile, slow and simple. It was one part seduction and another thrill. _Is this like when she goes bungee jumping off of bridges or diving from cliffs? Is this another conquest, another rush of adrenaline to remind herself that she’s alive and her own?_

But Kara just extended her hand, presenting an offering with no demands, no insistence. I could have taken the whole thing back, turned and walked to my table, sat in the same seat with one leg crossed over the other, shoulders squared and eyes at attention. I would hold my wine glass loosely and sip until it was empty, waiting for the refills to make their way around the room and take another. Just to blunt the edges and ease the distaste left in my mouth from all the pomp and circumstance. 

Instead, I took it. I twined our fingers together. I followed the path Kara set out on and asked no questions, demanded not a single answer.

 _What do you think of?_ The question repeated in my head, and all I could think of was not the words to answer, but the actions. 

A door opened, and a desk sat, too empty to be often used. Expensive lamps rested on expensive end tables, intricate embellished woodwork on the feet of each one. Kara switched on a singular light and did not touch the lightswitch on the wall, leaving the room almost covered in darkness. 

_What do you think of?_

I kissed her first. The fact of this almost took me by surprise. Partially because I never planned to make another move, but also the intensity of it. How I heard Kara’s question bouncing around the corners of her mind and had no choice but to answer it with unquestionable certainty. I kissed her hard, backed her against the door that didn’t even rattle when her hips hit it. Lips parted, waiting and eager. Kara didn’t merely accept me. She received me with excitement, pushing back with her own enthusiasm, her own request for more. 

My hand cradled her face, the other wrapping around her. And Kara… Kara’s hands were everywhere. She ran her hands along my arms, resting them on my hips and tugging me forward. They didn’t rest for long but were never grabbing or insistent. She did not grasp without the intention of letting go. Maybe I had forgotten exactly how it felt, or maybe I never really knew it in the first place, but Kara’s hands on me, impatient and hopeful and a tiny bit desperate, they reminded me what it meant to be wanted. 

All of my senses were clogged with thoughts of Kara. Her scent filling my nostrils, the sight of her with parted lips and shut eyes and loose, tangled golden hair spilling free, the sensation of her touch, fingers over fabric and then pressed against skin. Her hand running along my bare arm sent a thrill through me, tingling along my spine and pooling low in my stomach. 

“You,” I found myself muttering. “You, you, you.”

\-----

When I returned to the party, my hair looked distinctly like I just had sex. I did my best to tame it. I could only hope that my usually unruly curls didn’t look that different from usual. 

We had helped each other straighten out our clothes. Arryn pulled breath mints from her pocket which she offered. I spritzed us both with a bit of perfume and sent her back first. My lipstick had been sacrificed some time between being pressed to a bookshelf with my lips locked against Arryn’s and having fallen to my knees in front of the woman who had driven me mad since the day I had met her. She had filled me with distaste and displeasure and walked some fine line of hatred that never felt truly earned but was undeniable when my teeth ground together, my very skin on edge. _Huh, perhaps that was for a different reason._

My heart was still pounding with the same ferocity it had been at the height of my orgasm. Deep breaths doing shit all to calm it. Because I just had sex with Arryn Bernal. At the Knox Com Éclat Dinner which was arguably my mother’s biggest pre showcase event and was bursting at the seams with important figures, not to mention the journalists. Undeniably, I had made some bad decisions on the worst possible night for them. The thought alone left me warring between guilt and exhilaration. 

A full two minutes after Arryn left, I followed. I slipped back into the room where music was swelling. Some people danced formally in the middle of the room while others took the opportunity to network with all the influential people gathered in one room.

“There you are.” Bethan’s tone was filled with poorly hidden displeasure. “Where the fuck have you been?”

“Bathroom,” I answered quickly before her analyzing scan could determine an answer on its own. “Those mushroom caps sure didn’t agree with me.”

That’s all it took. Her nose wrinkled and she rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Your mother is looking for you.”

“Of course she is.”

She was in the far corner of the room, laughing at something Mr. Cullen had said without a degree of genuineness. I approached but waited to the side so as not to intrude. Pleasantries were exchanged for a minute with the clicking of cameras to backdrop the conversation. 

Alyce wrapped her arm through mine and lead me away, lips pressed into a smile as she spoke through gritted teeth. “Don’t think I didn’t notice your absence.”

“Don’t you have more important things to be worrying about right now?” I shot back, not pretending a damn thing for whoever may be watching. “I was gone for like, ten minutes. Relax.”

We came across another stockholder and shoot hands before continuing on. “And the Bernal girl?”

I snorted. “You think I care where she is?” Though my eyes had been scanning for her ever since returning. Though I looked for her now, as if just finding where she was in the room might help to reorient reality back into something that makes sense. 

“Contrary to your beliefs,” Alyce didn’t even sound angry, mostly tired, “I’m not actually stupid.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“I know those looks you two are sharing.”

It was not really ominous so much as annoying. I felt like a child being led to sit in the corner, to think about what I’d done and face the consequences. “I’m sorry I looked at the Heiress to Bernal Tech,” I said, fake remorse saturating my words. “I’ll be sure to direct my eyesight elsewhere next time.”

She rolled her eyes as we stopped when we were in the mouth of the doorway that was now propped open wide, announcing for the attendees that the time to leave was soon. “Watch yourself, Kara. I don’t want to intervene here.”

We assumed position by the exit, standing just close enough to pass as friendly but far enough apart that we weren’t in danger of so much as grazing arms. “Please, Alyce. Let’s not lie for once.”


End file.
